It was almost 11:00 by the time Noah Bain talked to Yung and Pittman, took the VICAP forms and profile materials by the FBI offices, and drove out Mago Vista to the street where Nolie Burr had listed her address. The apartment complex, which occupied an entire cul-de-sac was a Mediterranean affair, two stories of white stuccoed arches and terra-cotta tile roofs, fronted by a crescent of tall palms interspersed with crepe myrtle and protected from the high crime rate by a high-tech wrought-iron fence that needed security cards to open. Behind the crescent of palms he could see the obligatory swimming pool through a gap in the holly hedge growing against the wrought iron, and behind the pool the complex office.514Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrheCLOF0p6
After showing his badge and assuring the manager that Burr was in now way crossways with the "law," he received a map of the complex with a penciled x marking Burr's apartment. He followed the woman's directions through a series of courtyards with elevated redwood walkways, on either side of which palmettos and banana plants glistened in the almost visible humidity. He passed one of several hot tubs indicated on the map and finally entered a courtyard dominated by rose bushes blooming in every shade of pink and red. A pathway of herringbone-patterned bricks crossed the redwood boardwalk. To his right was the wrought-iron fence braided with roses, and the cul-de-sac; to his left was Nolie Burr's front door. He had not called to see if Nolie was there, but he had checked in at Burr's office and learned that she had not shown up for work.
Burr answered the door after only three rings, which surprised Noah, who had expected to have trouble getting Burr to talk to him. The girl stood in the doorway in a crisp white percale summer robe, squinting into the bright noon light. Her curly ginger hair was casually bunched up on her head in no particular style and held in place and held in place with pins. She wore no makeup, nothing to disguise the fair skin and spatter of freckles across her nose. No one would ever have doubted she was Irish.
"Hi," she said. She stood, half buried behind the door, leaning on the edge of it. She didn't seem to have a feeling one way or the other about seeing Noah standing there.
"Do you have a little while to talk to me?" Noah asked. He studied Burr's face. "I'll try not to take any longer than necessary."
"It's sooner or later, isn't it," Burr said. It wasn't a question.
"I'm afraid so."
"Come in." She stepped back and Noah walked into the front room of the apartment. It was immediately clear that all the amenities of the apartment could've been interchangeable with any of the millions of cookie-cutter complexes scattered throughout the city. The front room was small, with a fake fireplace and a moderate-size window that looked out into the courtyard. A bar separated the living room from the kitchen, and a hallway led back to the bedroom. Burr had done her best to decorate this Spanish-Mediterranean-style apartment with an art-deco flair, but it was apparent that she didn't have the same size budget to work with that Dowey had enjoyed. But Noah remembered the dress Burr had worn the previous day. Like many working women her age, almost everything she made went into her clothes. Looking good was right up there near the top of her list of priorities.
Noah sat in an armchair next to the inexpensive, bookless shelves facing the television. To her left was the window looking out to the courtyard and under it a sofa where Burr sat down, tucking one of her legs under her and ignoring a man's sport coat of beige raw silk thrown over the pillows of the opposite end. To Noah's right a breakfast bar looked into the kitchen----a Tolumura Horsemen baseball cap lay upside down next to a toaster----and in front of her was a glass coffee table scattered with magazines, a bottle of fuchsia nail polish, a pack of Virginia Slims, and an ashtray.
"Nice place you have here," Noah said. "Do you live alone?"
Burr nodded and reached for the ashtray and cigarettes.
Something in Burr's manner made Noah decide not to treat the girl as a "sister." This one wasn't going to let you be friends with her; it didn't seem like the correct approach. She got right to the business.
"Yesterday, when you were telling me about having stopped off for drinks at Saffron's. you said that besides you and Dowey there were three other women: Jeanette Craig, Violet Poole, and Maria Tyler. Did all of them work with Lauralee?"
Burr shook her head and exhaled her first puff of smoke. She was holding the ashtray in her lap, and a long pale leg was exposed to mid-thigh by the parting percale robe.
"No. Actually, only Violet works at TechCube, in the Symphony Tower. Jeanette and Maria work across the street at the Vertex Industries Plaza----at Phenomenologies. It's an ad agency. Sometimes we all meet at the same deli in the tunnels for lunch, and that's how we got to know one another. We all get off work at the same time. Maria's the only one, and she doesn't even work in the same department as Lauralee."
"Do you?"
"I do, yeah."
"Do you ever see any of these other women at any time other than at lunch or for a drink after work."
"Not really."
"What's that mean?"
Burr frowned defensively. "I don't understand."
"What does 'not really' mean? You don't see them or you do?"
"Well, sure, some, but I mean not all the time."
"In what context do you see them?" Noah couldn't tell if Burr was dense or giving him a hard time.
"Sometimes we date----I mean, you know, with guys to a club or something, or for dinner. Sometimes we might just go to a movie together. It's not all that often."
"But you did see Dowey more often?"
"Well, yeah. I work in the same office with her, we had exercise classes together, we don't live that far apart. There were times....." Burr had to drag on her cigarette, but it had nothing to do with smoking. She was checking her emotions. Noah was a little surprised at this. Burr's emotions were closer to the surface than Noah had thought. "-----she'd come by and we'd ride to work together. I'm on her way." She nodded and tried to keep her mouth from puckering. The cigarette was hoisted in the air, her elbow tucked into her side.
"You told me yesterday Lauralee's divorce was not a friendly one. What do you know about that?"
"Not a lot. Lauralee would talk about it sometimes, and I've met the guy." She dragged on the cigarette again. "I don't know how Lauralee could've married him in the first place. The guy's a friggin' bastard. He used to smack her around. He couldn't hold a job. For a while he was a chemicals-supply sales rep. You know, janitorial supplies to hotels and restaurants. For a while he was part owner of a tire company. He thought that was cool, the best job he'd ever had." She hit on the cigarette again. " 'Where the rubber meets the road.' That's what he'd say when he wanted to have sex. He thought that was smart as hell, like it was a unique expression. Lauralee used to imitate him. She was merciless. The guy was an asshole, and not even a good-looking asshole at that. I mean, I know that's subjective, but you poll a bunch of women, and he's not going to come out too good. I didn't like him. Lauralee said she married him right out of college, graduate school. He was very macho. That's why she did it."
"She liked macho men?"
"At that time she did. But not after having lived with the asshole for six years."
Burr mashed out her cigarette in the ashtray, picked up the pack beside her on the sofa, and lighted up another. She took her time, but her face showed that she was trying to collect her thoughts on this one. Noah's eyes scanned the coffee table: a TV Guide, Cosmopolitan, People, and peeking through two magazines turned on their backs, a pink-nippled, oversize breast and a cloying toothpaste smile, and above them the black banner title of a men's girlie magazine.
Somewhere in the back of the apartment a water pipe began to hiss softly as someone turned on a bathroom faucet. A quick twitch skittered across Burr's ginger eyebrows, but she kept her eyes glued on Noah, refusing to acknowledge what they both had heard.
"Do you remember when you first reported your worries for Lauralee last Saturday, you talked to a patrolman who came by but he was reluctant to check into the house?"
Burr nodded, interested.
"He put you off and suggested maybe Lauralee had gone on a spur-of-the-moment weekend with someone without telling anyone. You said maybe so. Were you aware she had done that before?"
"Yeah, she had."
"Who with?"
"I don't know. Just sometimes I would miss her, like at exercise class on Saturday, and when I would ask her about it at work on Monday she'd say she'd gotten an invitation for a weekend trip and she'd taken it. It was no big deal." She angrily ground out her cigarette in the ashtray. It wasn't even half smoked.
Great, this really wasn't heading anywhere, and Noah had the growing impression that Burr was holding out. At the same time she seemed genuinely disturbed by Dowey's death, her nerves just barely under control.
"We found some photographs among Lauralee's things," Noah said. Burr's eyes fixed on him, and she didn't move a muscle. "They were pornographic, and Lauralee was involved in them. She was tied to a bed in a sadomasochistic scenario. There was a man in a leather hood, a mask. Were you aware of these?"
Burr stiffened and shook her head quickly, too quickly .
"Did you know of Lauralee's interest in sadomasochism?"
Burr shook her head again.
This time Burr's expression had something else in it. She was no longer defiant or evasive or maddeningly uninformative because she had reached the point where her facial movements were operating on their own and she could no more have disguised the fear that showed there than she could have levitated off the sofa. Noah took advantage of it.
"We found some other things, too, and there were photographs of other people. I think you understand what I'm talking about. It's not really to anyone advantage for you to withhold anything on this. This is a homicide investigation, Nolie, and you're liable under the law if you know something that would be helpful to the investigation and you withhold it. We can keep secrets. We do it all the time. What you tell us will be confidential, it's part of the process. You don't have to worry about any of it getting out."
Burr's eyes had grown wider and a little wilder as Noah talked, and she had dropped her hands to her sides on the sofa as if to steady herself.
"What the hell are you talking.....What are you trying to do....?" she blurted. She slapped her clenched fists down on either side of her on the sofa and shook her head, her voice rising through clenched teeth. "What....what.....what...."
"Nolie!" The man's voice, quick and firm, caught them both by surprise. They turned toward the hallway near the kitchen and saw Adam McKinney standing there. he was barefoot, wearing white pants and a Jamaican pink shirt with stripes, the tail out, the long sleeves unbuttoned at the wrist. Carolyn was one step behind him.
Suddenly Nolie burst into tears, crying uncontrollably, not hiding her face, just sobbing with her eyes squeezed tightly shut, tears already streaming down her pale cheeks past her twisted mouth.
"Let me get her into the bedroom," McKinney said to Noah. It was half question, half statement. With a great deal of patience and tenderness, he helped the sobbing girl off the sofa. Supporting her by embracing her with his left arm, he began crooning soothingly, his voice taking on the same intonations of an old woman coddling her spoiled little house poodle.
Standing, Noah watched them leave the room and then looked at Carolyn, who hadn't moved a step. She was trim and tan in a peach cotton tank top tucked into a pair of tailored khaki shorts. Her girlish figure and bobbed hair shot through with gray created a striking image.
Before Noah could make sense of what he'd just seen, Carolyn said, "Look, I'm sorry to butt in like that, but....well----could we just step outside?"
They did, and the noon heat was coming up off the herringbone bricks with a vengeance. "Over here," Carolyn said, stepping up onto the redwood walkaway and going a little way into one of the courtyards near a trellis of roses. It was out of the sun, but into a pocket of humidity held close by the surrounding palmettos and banana trees.
"I'm sorry," she repeated. "I guess none of this is my business, or maybe it is. Anyway, I heard all of that in there," she said matter-of-factly. "I really couldn't help it. Nolie didn't call any of my friends yesterday, she lied about that. I've lived across the street from Lauralee for two years now. We saw each other at the pool a lot, but we didn't socialize. She had her own friends, I had mine. I kinda knew Nolie because she was over at Nolie because she was at Lauralee's a lot and sometimes was out at the pool with her. That's why I came over yesterday when I saw the police. She wouldn't stay at my place, so I came home with her last night and slept in her other bedroom. She didn't have a good night."
"Didn't she have other friends?"
Carolyn shrugged. "I just know she wouldn't call anyone. I asked her if she was going to be alone and she said yeah but she didn't give a damn. I tried to get her to stay at my place, but she didn't want to be across the street from Lauralee's."
She crossed her arms and shifted her weight to her left leg. "I don't know anything personal about their relationship, okay, but it seems to me that Lauralee was kind of like an older sister to her. Nolie wasn't being very helpful to you in there----this is my impression-----and I just thought maybe she didn't want to hear some of the stuff she was hearing. Couldn't deal with it."
"What do you mean?"
"Maybe she didn't want to hear those things about Lauralee. Look, I'm just giving you my impression. Staying here last night, it seemed to me that this girl is not all that independent. I think maybe Lauralee kinda looked after her a little-----"
Noah studied her, deliberately not saying anything, just looking at her. She was very well made and had a natural way of wearing a minimum of clothes. The low-cut arms on the tank top would've kept a man busy assessing her dimensions, but she wore it like an athlete. Her sure manner reminded Noah of the girls on the swim team at his college, comfortable with their bodies, easy in their nakedness.
"Do you work?" Noah asked.
Carolyn seemed shocked by the question, but not necessarily bothered.
"No."
"Are you home most of the time?"
"Yes." Her face portraying a sudden realization. "Adam's not my husband," she explained. "My last name's Schultz. I'm sorry, we didn't make that very clear. I'm divorced." She gave a small, hard smile. "I got half of everything. The way I see it, I made my payments into the mutual fund. I worked for the man on my feet and on my back for twenty years, a lot longer than I wanted to be on either one. The divorce was my retirement party, the settlement was my pension. Now I don't work anymore." She kind of tossed it off, but Noah could tell it was something that cut to the grain."
"And Mr. McKinney?"
"Not my live-in," she smirked. "Not permanently."
"There's a sport jacket in there on the sofa," Noah said. "Did that belong to Mr. McKinney?"
"No."
"Do you know whose it was?"
"No. Nolie doesn't have a significant other as far as I know. But----she's always got somebody. The jacket was there when we got there, but the guy's never shown up."
"Can you remember if you were home last Thursday night?"
Schultz thought back. "Thursday night, Thursday....I was. yes, I was home. I'd rented a couple of movies."
"We think that was when Lauralee was killed. Maybe around 10:00. Did you happen to notice anyone coming or going over there at any time on Thursday?"
Schultz thought for a moment, her eyes staying on Noah, a little dew of perspiration beginning to show on her chest just below the shallow dent in her throat. "No, I didn't see anything. At least nothing comes to mind." She frowned. "Jesus, it was last Thursday? She'd been in there that long? That's horrible!" She paused. "Did Nolie see her---like that?"
"Like what?"
"After she was dead----a while?"
"I think so."
"How did it happen?"
"She was strangled."
Schultz wiped the thin fingers of one hand delicately over her top lip, which was also perspiring now. A cicada's drone swelled and died out in a nearby mimosa. Noah felt a trickle forming on his trunk.
"What happens now?" Schultz asked.
"We don't have much to go on."
"I see." Schultz was looking toward the pathway around the corner.
Noah reached into his pocket and took out a card. He wrote his home phone number on the back and handed it to Schultz. "If anything comes up, day or night, anytime, I'd like to hear from you."
Schultz took the card and smiled. It was kind of an odd thing to do.
"I really want to get into this one," Noah said. "If you could help, I'd appreciate it."
They walked back toward Burr's apartment, and Noah let herself out the wrought-iron gate.
"Listen, Schultz said, talking through the bars. "Don't think too harshly of her. After a time, when she's calmed down some, maybe she'll come up with something."
Walking back to the car Noah feel the moisture all over her body as the air she created moved around her. Standing still, he hadn't really noticed. He unlocked the car and left the door open for a moment.514Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFUm5VEHrqU
Before he got in he glanced back across the cul-de-sac. Schultz was still standing at the gate, watching him. Noah pretended he didn't see her, though he didn't know why.514Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWVrN0e0BIF
